


Way of Calling

by revolutionator



Category: BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 12:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12983637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionator/pseuds/revolutionator
Summary: Rimi just wishes that Misaki would be consistent, so that she knows where she stands.





	Way of Calling

**Author's Note:**

> For Lappy.  
> Inspired by how the game keeps forgetting that they are supposed to know each other, haha

Her name is Rimi Ushigome. Rimi. Rimi. Rimi Ushigome. It's okay to use Rimirin if you're a friend. It's okay to use Rippi or Riichan or Rimimi, if you're a friend. It's okay to use Ricchan. Miccan. Rimin. Mimi. Riri. She likes the surname nicknames less: Ushimin, Usshi, Ushigo, Ushimi. She wishes she had a more dignified surname. Those would be okay too, though, if a friend said them, if the friend was too embarrassed to use the first name.

 

She steps out into the sunlight, raising one hand to shade her eyes. The sky is so blue in Autumn, so clear. It is temperate, neither hot nor cold. It is good reading weather, which is why she is at the library to begin with. Her messenger bag is stuffed with books. She stops on the stone steps before the library's entrance, still squinting, scouting a place to sit.

 

“Ushigome-san?”

 

Someone who is not a friend. Rimi turns immediately, squeaking acknowledgement – she would die first in a horror movie, she knows, because of exactly this. She can't stop herself from making that noise when people talk to her. Her friends say it is cute. She isn't sure if they're lying or not.

 

The girl in front of her is only a little taller, with sallower skin and greasier hair – it's hanging in a ponytail today, which hides the worst of it. Her face and hands are clean, though, as are her clothes, her hooded jacket, her woolen cap. The cap has a kitten stitched onto the side. While Rimi stares at the girl before her, the girl reaches up with one hand to itch the embroidered fur.

 

“Oku....sawa-san,” Rimi says, awkwardly, like she isn't quite sure what name to use, except it's not 'like' anything, that is just how it is. She had thought they were friends, but maybe she had gotten that wrong. Sometimes she gets things mixed up and makes mistakes. “You're not... I mean, don't you have work today?”

 

“Mm,” Okusawa says, smiling the world's tiredest smile, “if you mean band practice, it's cancelled because Kokoro got the flu.”

 

“Ah...”

 

“What did you get? Looks heavy.”

 

“Oh, just… Just the usual…”

 

“Let me know if they're good, yeah? I could use something fun to read.”

 

Okusawa spreads her fingers out in a slightly sweaty wave and then she is gone, back bent forwards to brace against the cold, her own messenger bag flapping against her hip in a flimsy manner denoting how little it has inside it. Rimi stays standing on the steps, taking a nice deep breath of cold air.

 

She knows that the blueness of the sky is to do with the refraction of light and how her eyeballs decode it, and she knows that the breaths she take can't take that blue with it, cant fill her lungs with clarity and cloudlessness, but still she envisions herself doing just that. Her breath whistles on the way out. _Shhhhh._ She gathers up herself and sets about finding the space to sit.

 

It would be nice, her brain continues, if Misaki – if Okusawa-san – would call her Riri or Mimi or Rimirin. Like how she wants to call her Misaki-chan. Kitazawa-san – Hagumi – calls Misaki `Mi-kun`, she knows that. Other people can call her Misaki. She isn't sure why she herself is hung up on it. It is not, after all, like they are close. They are not in the same band, nor are they in the same class. They only have those little chance encounters to speak of between them.

 

She finds an unoccupied bench to perch and unloads her cargo onto it. It is still quiet, right now, because most people are at club or still at work, or at their part-time job, or at band practice, and Rimi made sure to run to grab this little slot of time for exactly that reason. She doesn't have the money lately to just order books by the truckload from Amazon, and the Book-Off is just filled with the same cast-offs she's already been through a million times. The library is a good middle ground.

Rimi sits and reads. It's hard to get into it at first, because she's still thinking about how cool and disconnected Misaki was with her at the sports meet, and how she'd been so cordial just now but still not as close, so maybe Rimi had just made their closeness up? Maybe she had just imagined they'd clicked well after all that fiasco with her Michelle suit and the ensuing awkward chat.

 

Rimi breathes out so hard it makes a sigh. The sky is so open and clear and easy. She takes a couple of moments just to watch the clouds before she plunges back into the pages, swimming in a shadow world where the villain lurks behind every corner. Wild horses wouldn’t draw certain things from her, like how she secretly imagines it might be quite thrilling to have a dark suited gentleman – or gentlewoman- following her every move, so long as he didn’t have nefarious plans for her at the end. Maybe that's why she likes Kaoru so much, not that wild horses could manage to pull that confession out either.

 

This story is a pretty good one, well above her average lazy hack-n-slash gorefests. The protagonist of this one is a soft, plump every-girl with bad skin and poor self esteem. The way the text describes her doesn’t even make her seem secretly beautiful. Rimi doesn’t mind those ones either, but there's something honest about how plain Michiko is, and besides, she doesn't need to be pretty. Michiko is smart. She deduces her way out of the labyrinthine trap the villain locks her in the first time, and she is the only survivor of the fire he sets later, something she is still wrestling with in chapter five. She is just telling her friend Ami that she feels too guilty to hang out with her any more when a shadow falls over the page.

 

“This seat free?”

 

It's Okusawa-san.

 

“Oh! Yes...”

 

She scoots to the side, even though there's more than enough space for Misaki and her book bag. Misaki falls into the seat with all the weight and grace of a sandbag. She glances over at the jacket of Rimi's book and grins.

 

“You're the one who checked that out? I was looking for it.”

 

Rimi searches for something smart to say and fails to find it. She nods instead. Then she clutches the book a little harder. “Everyone online says it's got a good ending…”

 

Misaki nods. “Let me know when you're done, yeah? I put myself down on the waiting list.”

 

Rimi thinks about asking how she is supposed to tell her that when she doesn’t have Misaki`s contact information, or her LINE or social media or anything like that, and even if she did the idea of calling her just to tell her that she finished a book makes her break out in a white-hot sweat of anxiety, and what are the alternatives anyway? Tell Kasumi to tell Kokoro to tell Misaki?

 

She nods again without saying anything. Then she just passes the book over, so quickly that Misaki almost drops it on the ground. Misaki looks shocked, but Rimi probably also looks shocked. She didn’t know she was going to do that until she did it.

 

“I can read fast,” she says, which also surprises her, that she already had a justification lying in wait, “so why don’t you take it first… I can finish it when you get it back to me, whenever, but, the protagonist…”

 

Misaki makes a half-hearted motion to give the book back. She must really want to read it, Rimi thinks, which makes her all the more committed.

 

“The protagonist reminds me of you,” she squeaks, feeling her face fill up with heat like a kettle, realising only after she says it that Michiko is described in no uncertain terms as “homely”, “plain”, “basic” and other such things, but hoping that when Misaki reads it she means the good bits. How Michiko is smart and funny and dogged. How Michiko seems sad in a way that Ami cannot help her with, but still wants to try to help her with, even though there isn’t much excuse for her to try.

 

Thinking this last part makes her heart beat fast. It doesn’t slow when Misaki speaks.

 

“Rimi…”

 

Her heart squeezes painfully tight. Half of it is embarrassment. The other half feels like embarrassment too.

 

Rimi doesn’t look up from her knees for a long time. She can see the gold and yellow foliage whipping past in the breeze, and the gravel, and from here she can hear the hustle-bustle of library patrons milling back and forth and snatches of conversation. It takes too much effort to lift her head. She is scared of what Misaki might look like when she does. If there is pity in her face Rimi might just have to make her excuses and run away.

 

Misaki takes her hand. It’s as gently moist as it seemed at first glance.

 

“Yeah,” she continues to speak while Rimi’s head fills with white noise. “That’s really nice of you to say, you know? So I can’t turn it down after that. But I’ll get it back to you like, tomorrow morning, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Rimi squeaks.

 

Misaki pats her hand again before standing up. The electricity of the moment has dulled some, so Rimi can finally look her in the face. No pity. Just a warm, mildly tired smile.

 

“I feel a bit weird about reading this right in front of you,” Misaki explains. “And if I get started now I can get it back in the morning… Oh, hey, we don’t have each other on LINE, do we?”

 

“No,” Rimi says, feeling like she’s eking the word out of a million tightly squeezed balloons inside of herself. All of her feels taut and ready to burst. If only she knew _why_. “Do…Do you want to…”

 

“Sure.” Misaki offers her phone. They scan each other’s QR codes and then Misaki insists on getting Rimi’s phone number too, which she titles with ’Ushigome-san’. Rimi writes her name down as ’Misaki’. Neither of them say anything about that.

 

Maybe that’s okay, though.

 

Misaki puts the book in her bag very carefully. Rimi watches her prise two other books apart to slip the new novel between, has them act like a barrier. It is kind of cute.

 

’I'll see you tomorrow, Ushigome-san,” Misaki says. Her voice is so warm. How can it be so warm and still feel like a stranger is talking to her?

 

Rimi smiles at her. Misaki gathers up her things without further comment. It feels even more defiant to do it this time, so she loses her nerve, but she can say it to Misaki’s retreating back when she is just far enough away that she might not hear her.

 

“I hope you like it, Misaki-chan!”

 

Misaki doesn’t turn back before she takes the road around the corner and vanishes from sight, but she does flash a peace sign back behind her. Impossible to tell whether it was directed at Rimi or not. It probably was, though, she thinks to herself, and feels a lot better.

 


End file.
